What made us decide to embark on the Antennas Now! tour?
It started last spring when our office had a flurry of calls & antenna orders from residents in Sacramento. That’s odd I thought, why would we sell more antennas in two days than we had in the previous year to that area. It turns out that unbenownst to us, a TV station in Sacramento had purchased one of our bow tie antennas, tested it and proceeded to recommend it to their viewers during a newscast. Wow! that was nice of them. The following weeks we started getting calls from stations around the country asking for antenna samples they could try out. Some even wanted to buy master cases of our antennas and give them out to their viewers.
It was starting to occur to many TV stations that the analog shut off in 2009 would mean that many people would lose their reception particularly if they were using legacy “rabbit ear” type antennas. So, what if we could create a program to give TV stations evaluation antennas, antenna reccomenndations and performance and educational information to help their viewers ease in to the transition. And if the station would be willing, even assist in their DTV educational efforts by arriving on site, handing out antennas and instructing people on the most successful installation techniques.
Now, knowing that there are over 1600 full power TV stations in the United States if only a percentage of them were to partner with us, we could get the word out on a massive scale as to how antennas have improved, make over the air reception mainstream again and maybe even sell a few antennas in the process.
Our original thought was that maybe 8-10 stations would be interested in partnering with us in such an endeavor. So far nearly 50 stations have invited us to visit their market and assist them in the DTV educational effort. We’ll keep you posted as this progresses.